Yeah I might do an elrod because it will most likely be easier, no pin hole, eye cuts aren’t awful, and I hear the paint is easier to strip? I’ll check my local spirit/party city for one, but if I cant find one I’ll go with an elrod
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Did you mean a Tramer? The Elrod has the needle hole 
-Dana
Thank you! I’m having a lot of fun working on this mask. The weathering is something I’m figuring out as I go, I typically go a little heavier at first, using multiple colors, and then back it off by selectively re-applying the base color to either mute some weathering to to bring back some of the original color. Taking my time. I was hoping to have it done for Halloween, but I won’t make it this year.
Thanks for the kind words. I always try to post something useful when I show my work. You guys give great encouragement as well as feedback/criticism. It’s great to be able to share both ways. Closing the hole wasn’t too bad in my opinion.
-Dana
Alrighty folks,
Last night I put on the blu-ray for Halloween for inspiration and I got to more weathering. This time I continued to lay on thinned down Burnt Umber acrylic and get the broad dirt/damage in. Here I’m sculpting the story of where the mask was handled, scuffed, dropped, where dirt collected, etc. As I mentioned in the previous post, after the next damage color goes on (a more neutral dark grey) it should balance this out a bit more. The color is biasing brown at this stage. I’ll also come back at the end with base white/silver to tie things together and bring back some original tone. On to some progress shots:
For those interested, my technique for this style of weathering goes something like this.
That’s all for now.
-Dana
Happy Halloween!!
Last night I wrapped up painting on the mask. Enjoy some closeups:
So, as I mentioned before, painting continued with a quick pass of white/silver to recover the intended tone of the mask and soften some of the Burnt Umber grunge that was biasing the mask too warm. I also used this thinned down base white/silver mixture to go in and add some flecks and chips of white that remained on the flesh tone areas. Trying to sell some residual paint left over and help give the illusion of less-than-perfect edges where abrasion/flaking occured. Then I went in and did a careful but similar weathering pass with a thinned down mix of charcoal and black acrylic (probably 70-30 mix). This let me add some heavier bits of dirt/grime as well as some subtle smudging and contouring. Once that was all dry, I used a brush to line the eye hole cuts with the same charcoal grey acrylic (without any black this time).
Finally, I sealed the mask using Krylon Crystal Clear Gloss misted over all of the areas that have white paint and I used Krylon Crystal Clear Matte over any areas that were flesh tone. The idea here was to help sell the illusion that the underlying flesh/latex areas are less shiny that areas that retained the white paint. I didn’t go heavy, so the mask has a nice little sheen at certain angles when the light catches it just right.
Here are some wider indoor shots of the mask:
I learned a lot on this first mask and I’m definitely going to try some new techniques on my next one. However, I’m really happy with how it turned out. Especially knowing it started as (in my opinion) an ugly Elrod.
Have fun today/tonight everyone!
-Dana
Looks excellent Dana 
Looking awesome man! It’s great you’re giving pointers as I see tons of people wondering how to water down the paint. I’m loving the grimey, grungy look you’re going for with the weathering brother
Thank you!
Thanks! I thought I could get this done by Halloween, but I really needed another week to get the hair done and finish weathering my coveralls. So instead I felt it would be good to take photos as I went and spend some time documenting what I was doing in case others could benefit from following the thread.
Hair is up next!
-Dana
I’ll certainly benefit from this, as I have a ‘spare’ Elrod. I intend to do something similar at some point. If I can get it half as good as yours is looking I’ll be happy.
Glad to help you out! Good luck on your project.
-Dana
Ok, I’m back for a quick update.
I’m planning to use a combination of Crepe hair and Mohair for this mask (the mixture will predominantly be Crepe hair). I got a bunch in a color called Dark Blonde. They came in 36" lengths, twisted with twine-like string. I spent a bunch of time freeing the Crepe hair from their bindings and then proceeded to dye it with permanent hair dye. I used a Clairol “Nice N’ Easy” hair color called “Light Golden Brown”. I didn’t dye all of the hair, just a bit more than half of what I had. So after letting it dry out this morning, I cut it into 4-5" pieces.
Below is an image showing raw un-dyed hair on the left and in the middle/right is the range of color in the dyed hair. I plan to mix them together carefully to achieve a good base head of hair (the ultimate plan is to mist it lightly with some black acrylic paint shot through my airbrush to simulate the H1 hair):
Here’s some of the hair laid out in short pieces (boy do I have a lot more hair made up!):
And here’s some Mohair that I died with the same hair dye color. I think it matches pretty well considered what the Crepe blend has going on tone-wise.
Well, it’s time to start blending and then gluing. Wish me luck!
-Dana
Ok, here’s an in progress shot of the hair. I’m almost done with gluing and just have a bit on the top and the hairline all around the face left to do. I’m currently studying some reference before I do that. I’ve been using Quick Dry Tacky Glue and like the way it’s been working out. It took some getting used to.
Here are some notes I have on the hair at this point:
That’s it for now, hope to finish gluing tonight!
-Dana
Yeah I meant tramer, guess I was just thinking about elrods at the time lol
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Gotcha! I think if you can get your hands on either mask you should be good.
-Dana
Alrighty. Last night I wrapped up gluing hair! I took the mask outside this morning and it was a windy morning here in Southern California (at least where I live). Here’s a shot of where I’m at with the mask:
I’m going for the H1 look with a bit of volume on top before it gets super crushed down later in the film. I think I could honestly do either version with this hair, but for now my plan is to go with the freaky 1978 pompadour look.
Some notes on what I did since my last post where the hair was almost done… I spent some time looking at reference for the hairline and I temporarily laid pieces of hair along my masks hairline, shaped it, moved it, compared it to photo reference, and I also got up and looked at it from different distances/angles until I had it to my liking. Then I took a few sections off, and started to glue them while leaving the rest of the hairline pieces just laid in place on the mask (unglued). This left visual guides for me to use while I worked a section at a time. It worked pretty well for me.
I did a quick little trim to even out the lengths of hair in some areas, I also brushed some more hair out and I think it’s helping to remove excess hair particularly in the back of the mask. I didn’t spend much time doing anything else. I just wanted to get a feel for what I have left to do on the hair. I need to mist it with black paint (I think I’ll go easy on this), and then shape it a bit more and use something to create better fly-aways/horns as I hear them called.
I still need to create the famous glue lines for the missing sideburn/temples and add little remnants of hair to those. Shouldn’t be a problem as I’ve saved all of the hair I’ve brushed out in a plastic bag. Plus I have tons of extra hair since I didn’t know how much I’d need to hair a Myers. I also plan to do a bit more paint work but pretty minor to tie some things together now that I see the mask with hair.
I’m excited to be nearing the finish line!
-Dana
Looking great !
Thank you very much! I’m trying to do this guy justice. I also thought people might like this photo:
Along the way, I’ve converted certain photos to Black & White to try and see my work in a different light. I try and compare where I’m at to various B&W behind the scenes photos from Halloween. The high contrast and resolution of this photo exaggerate the grittiness of my weathering, but I concede that my mask probably has more “tooth” to the weathering than the real one did.
Enjoy,
-Dana
Wow! That looks amazing! How did you manage to score an elrod that wasn’t a distorted, flat copy?! I ended up sending two copies back because everything was smashed. Really dig the hair!
Thank you for the kind words.
I really wish I had thought to take more pictures of my Elrod copy before I began reworking it. I suppose I didn’t because I thought it was a horrible lost cause when I received it! I mean I was seriously bummed about the mask I received. Read on if you care to know why.
I bought mine through an eBay auction (paid $59) and it took over a week to get to me in CA from NJ. I was really eager and excited (making the wait more difficult) but that was all about to change. It arrived folded in half in a sealed plastic bag. When I first pulled it out, it was a bit misshapen overall but it didn’t have any harsh seam in the face from being folded. I did notice that the areas between the nose and the eye holes were bulged/distorted (it made the eyes look really bad and I thought the mask was ruined right out of the gate.
I stuffed some plastic bags in the mask and let it sit for a few days while I contemplated looking for a different mask. I really wasn’t sure I could do anything with the Elrod and honestly was questioning what the heck you guys see in this mask 
Fast forward a couple days and the bulging had gone down some! I guess the mask needed to be given an opportunity to recover from having been folded. At this point, I decided to spend some time each day trying to reverse the remaining distortions by working the latex in the opposite direction with my hands. I would push/stretch/fold the areas in the opposite direction and hold it like that for several minutes and then let the mask rest. I repeated this a few times and after a few more days, the mask looked to be in better overall shape.
I was much happier. The eye holes and hair still were awful and distracted me so I figured if I ripped off the hair and just tried to fix the eyes I could tell if the mask was salvageable. That’s when I started this thread. I had ripped off the hair and drawn temporary eye hole adjustments on with a pen (see the first post) and only then could I squint an see what everyone else was seeing in the Elrod mask.
I hope this long story helps,
-Dana
Work continues today. I focused on getting the sideburn glue lines/residue knocked out.
I decided to do these using rubber cement that I mixed with some of my base color (white/silver oil paint mix). Before it could dry, I took little remnants of hair from all the brush-outs I’ve been doing and imbedded them into the rubber cement lines. Then I trimmed the hairs and plucked some out where I felt the density was too high. Here’s what it looked like by that phase:
Last, I took a wash of thinned down charcoal grey acrylic paint and went over these to help dirty up the glue and blend them back into the underlying paint job. As before, I put this color on with a brush and some work with my fingers/paper towels to soften and blend where desired. I also spread some into the region the hair used to cover to get a slight shift in the tone as I seem to see in some shots from the film. Not sure why or if it’s accurate :
The difference is subtle but thought it was worth showing/pointing out.
-Dana